Story
Gizmo
Gary Indiana
(from Gristle Springs, a novel of intrigue)
In a detention cell at Gizmo, Umma Obikhan Khan, supposedly blind as the proverbial bat (having dwelt in many caves, the Umma knew well that bats are not at all blind, but simp...
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Photographs
Wall Street – Charles Gatewood Photographs
Charles Gatewood
In early 1972, I spent a week with William Burroughs in London, photographing a cover story for Rolling Stone. Burroughs' radical ideas about power, control, and money touched me deeply. When I returned to New York, I bega...
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Poem
Time Now and Everything
Michael Randall
other nights I’ve heard it
just outside the window
fluttering in the dark, waiting
now I’m not convinced
the heart fails the spirit
sputters
all voices silent then choral music
on the radio quiet at first
b...
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Essay
Memory is Narrative; Narrative is Memory
Ronald B. Richardson
Memory is Narrative
Memory is mostly narrative. I say mostly because there are rare memories that are not, such as olfactory memories: you smell something, and it suddenly takes you back to . . . what? In these memories, ...
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Story
Purple Heron of the Night
Raúl Serrano Sánchez
Claudio was only trying to make up for all the years he’d spent yearning for those legs, the ones he was always telling you about over coffee in the newly restored center of the old city, in one of those bars that’s supp...
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Poem
The Good Shit & Presence: Rue Girardon
Pete Simonelli
The Good Shit
We were told the bubbles should look like little pebbles you could pour clean into your hand.
“Go on, shake it,”
said Peanut, junk dealer, mechanic, and feral-cat wrangler by day,
shiner by night.
�...
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Art
Peter Shear – Paintings
Peter Shear
What really sends me is artwork containing a spaciousness of address which allows for our looking to become consuming and urgent. In these moments the relationship between object and audience can be truly generative, a p...
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Story
The Cherub
E. A. Fow
On the way to rehearsal, Amy thought she saw something flit away. An afterimage lingered in her eye, pink and faintly glowing, but she couldn’t make out what it was. She didn’t think about it again until the next day, wh...
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Essay
Catastrophes
Breyten Breytenback
No, the universe remains dark. We are animals overcome by catastrophes . . . but I suddenly discovered that alienation, the exploitation of man by man, and malnourishment, will push into the background the metaphysical evil,...
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Story
Tenth Between Fear & Trembling
Max Blagg
We lived one floor up from a woodworking shop from which the tools had long since been stolen. It was on East Tenth Street, way over almost to the river, a view of the smokestacks of Con Edison’s 14th Street plant painted ...
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Poem
Evil Polish Boners & Other Flarf Poems
Sharon Mesmer
Evil Polish Boners
I don’t know what it is about spandex suits for wrestling and rowing,
but they always seem to create the most evil Polish boners.
The Polish boner is a boner that the Polish boner team created
...
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Story
Looking Back: Anxiety’s Greatest Hits
Patrick O'Neil
San Francisco, June 24, 1997
I’m in a dark, trash-filled alley between tall brick buildings. Two men stand in shadows. I can’t see their faces. I hand one of them money and he gives me a balloon of dope. I look up, th...
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Poem
The Hurricane
Ron Kolm
My Sister is a pastor
For a hospice
In New Jersey—
She’s part of a team
That drives up and down
The length of the state
Helping the dying die.
She spends her nights
In motels and keeps her files
In her car; her...
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Story
Road Kill
Drew Hubner
In an alley on the fringes of the march, Glory stuffed toilet paper bits in her ears and got out of danger, whispering to the baby in her tummy, running deeper into the alley for safety.
Text me, she'd said to the fath...
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Story
Dear Satan
Tony DuShane
My prayer was answered. I found a Hustler magazine.
I often prayed to Satan for a Playboy to appear under my mattress. When the urge was strong and the need to see a naked woman was important for a decent pubescent sessio...
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